The Sun today stepped up its attack on Clare Short, vowing to put forward a candidate to stand against her in the next election.

It has formed its own political party, the Page 3 Party, to campaign against the Labour MP, who earlier this week repeated her attack on the daily diet of pictures of topless women in the tabloid.

The Sun has already superimposed the maverick MP's head on the body of a topless woman, compared her to the back end of a bus and branded her a "fat" and "jealous" "killjoy" for saying that Page 3 demeans women.

Today it continued the assault, changing a topless model's name to Clare Short and travelling to the Labour MP's constituency in Birmingham Ladywood to announce that another model named Nicola T would stand against her in the next general election.

Having already parked a double decker bus with a delegation of Page 3 girls outside her house earlier this week, another model was yesterday dispatched to offer Ms Short a Page 3 calendar.

The Sun said the MP was so desperate to escape that she flagged down passing motorists in an effort to escape, eventually being picked up by a red Mercedes.

The paper also rounded up a number of celebrities, including TV host Richard Madeley and Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox, to back Page 3.

The furore started when Ms Short criticised the Sun at a Westminster lunch on Tuesday, where she said she wanted to "take the pornography out of our press".

"I'd love to ban it. It degrades women and our country," she said. "A survey of Sun readers' wives and daughters showed they believed it degraded them. We need to push back the tide of nakedness. You can't take it out of the whole of society but I think you can take it out of the mainstream," she added.

When Rebekah Wade was appointed editor last year, some believed she would axe Page 3 but she has turned out to be one of its most fervent supporters.

On her first day as editor - January 13 2003 - Wade walked into the office sporting a Page 3 badge, and for her inaugural paper she chose a model with the same name as her.

Ms Short is a long-time opponent of Page 3 who has twice before tried unsuccessfully to introduce private members' bills outlawing topless models in newspapers.

The paper's campaign has been criticised by some as a shallow publicity stunt, designed to give the paper an excuse to publish more pictures of topless models.

Writing in the comment pages of the Guardian today, Madeleine Bunting said it was "a non-story".

"It will have little effect on Short, who shows an indomitable spirit in holding her ground. Nor is it likely to affect Sun sales; a vendetta against a 57-year-old grandmother who has earned considerable public affection for her forthright views is unlikely to haul in more readers, however many breasts on the front page," she said.

"But where it does have an impact is that this kind of bullying attempts to kill off public debate about the way women are portrayed in the mass media - and to a considerable extent succeeds."